Then another movement, glimpsed from the corner of my eye, caught my attention, and as I turned to look, I heard the terrible grating, grinding noise made by the stone gargoyle as it ponderously rocked itself across the floor. Although no one was near enough to be at risk if it fell over, I nevertheless called out a warning.
Flora took one look and shouted: “Stop it! Stop it right now!”
The gargoyle stopped moving, and so did the stick, although Jesperson still kept a tight hold and a wary eye on it.
Harcourt took a hesitant step forward, his eyes still fixed upon the stick. “Give – give it to me, if you please, Mr Jesperson,” he said. “That – that is the weapon that killed poor Mr Adcocks; and before that, a young man in Plymouth. If not for your exceptionally quick reflexes, you would have been its third victim.”
After a reluctant pause, Jesperson handed over the stick, saying, “You expected this might happen?”
“Never,” the man gasped, staring at the stick in his hands with an unhealthy mixture of lust and fear. “Who would imagine that the instinct to kill would be inherent?”
“You imagined it inherent in me,” said Flora. “A mindless, killing force so powerful that it could use me – a living, intelligent being – without regard for my own free will?”
“No, no, certainly not,” he said, without conviction. “You were a mere infant, with no ability to think or act for yourself, when fate used you to terminate the lives of three innocent souls. It is quite different now.” He had been looking at her, but the lure of the object in his hands proved too much, and he soon returned to staring at it like a besotted lover.
“You’ve always thought of me as another piece in your collection,” Flora said bitterly. “A mindless, soulless thing, and not even your favourite.”
“Dear Flora, don’t be absurd. I know you are no ‘thing’. You have been like a daughter to me. Have I not always cared for you as best I could? Bought you whatever your heart desired? My only concern has ever been to see you safely and happily married to the man of your choice, when the time came.”
While my sympathies were entirely with Flora, I recognized that to an outside observer she would seem hysterical, and Harcourt the sane one.
“Yet you must have wondered,” Jesperson said, as if idly. “Eh, Harcourt? You surely wondered if your ward was intended by Fate for family happiness. Perhaps you saw her first engagement as a scientific experiment. The result was not as you hoped, but perhaps as you feared…?”
They exchanged a look, man to man, and although Harcourt shook his head ruefully, I saw the smug satisfaction beneath the solemn expression.
“You’re vile,” Flora murmured. She cleared her throat and announced, “I can never marry. I won’t put another life at risk.”
This time, Harcourt did not protest. He shrugged and sighed, and said, “I would never force you to go against your will, no matter how foolish it seems to me.”
“That’s not all. I’m leaving your collection today, Mr Harcourt-”
“Oh, come now. Don’t be childish. You can’t blame me for what you are!”
“Not for what I am; only for what you’ve tried to make me. The atmosphere in this house is hideous, not because of the objects, but because of your gloating fascination with murder and violent death. I’m going. I won’t set foot in this house again as long as you are alive.”
Having stated her intention, she made straight for the door.
I felt the shudder that ran through the house even before her hand touched the handle; it was a sensation so subtle yet so profound that I thought at first I might be ill.
Harcourt yelled. His nose was bleeding; the walking stick had come to life again in his hand and seemed determined to beat him to death. He managed to remove it to arm’s length, and struggled to keep it under control. The gargoyle, too, was shuddering back to life, and, from the variety of creaks and groans and fluttering sounds I heard coming from the next room, so were other pieces of the collection.
“Move,” said Jesperson urgently, propelling me forward. “Get out of the house! Is there anyone else here?” Hearing the shouts, the little maid who’d let us in reappeared, and, although looking utterly bewildered, allowed him to usher her outside as well.
We met Flora at the front gate and turned back to look at the house.
“Where’s Harcourt?” Jesperson demanded. “He was right behind me.”
“He won’t leave his collection,” said Flora. “He’ll have gone back for it. He used to worry aloud about what he should save first, if the house were on fire.”
“But it’s the collection itself that’s the threat!”
On my own, I might have left Harcourt to his fate, but when my partner ran back inside, I felt it my duty to follow. Mounting the front steps, I was able to see through the window into the study, and what I saw brought me to a standstill.
Pale and portly Mr Harcourt was leaping and whirling like a dervish, holding the silver-headed stick away from his body like a magic staff, as he struggled to evade a flurry of small objects bent on striking him. Occasionally in his efforts he unconsciously pulled his arm in closer to his body, allowing the stick to give him a sharp crack on his leg or shoulder, and then he would shriek in pain or anger.
Books and other things continued to tumble from the shelves. Many simply fell, but others seemed hurled with great force directly at him, and these struck a variety of glancing blows against his body, head, and limbs. A glass-fronted display case shook fiercely, as if caught in an earthquake, until it burst open, releasing everything inside. A great malignant swarm composed of small bottles, jars, needles, pins, razors, and many more things I could not recognize enveloped the man, whose cries turned to a constant, terrified howling as they attacked him.
Feeling sick, I turned aside and went indoors to my partner, who was throwing himself bodily against the solid oak door of Harcourt’s study, as if he imagined he could force it open. Seeing me, he stopped and rubbed his shoulder, looking a little sheepish.
I gave him one of my hairpins, assuming he would know how to use it.
As he fiddled with the lock, I listened to the horrible sounds that accompanied the violence on the other side: thuds and thumps, shrieks and wails and groans, and then a shocking, liquid hissing, followed by a gurgle, and then the heaviest thud of all, and then silence.
By the time Jesperson managed to get the door open, it was all over. Harcourt was dead. His bloody, battered corpse lay on the carpet, surrounded by the remnants of his murderous collection. Whatever life had possessed them had expired with his. There was a sharp, acrid stench in the room – I guess from the contents of various broken bottles – but nothing so foul as the atmosphere it replaced.
“Vitriol,” said Jesperson. “Don’t look.”
But I had already seen what was left of the face, and it was no more shocking than the sounds had led me to imagine.
As I went out to give Flora Bellamy the news, and to send the maid to fetch the police, I already knew that this had not turned out to be a case I could write about for publication.
And, as it developed, it grew worse.
It was fortunate indeed that Jasper Jesperson had some influential relatives who moved in the circles of power, for otherwise I think the local police would have been pleased to charge him with murder, in the absence of more likely suspects, and if he hadn’t done it, I was their next choice.
Even though we might argue we had saved his life, our client was so far from pleased with the outcome of our investigations that he refused to pay us anything. It was not Harcourt’s death that bothered him so much as Miss Bellamy’s insistence on releasing him from their engagement. She would give him no better reason for her change of heart than to say that she was reconsidering how she might best spend her life, and that she was inclined to seek some form of employment by which to support herself “like Miss Lane”.